Speaking at a recent event in Sydney, AFCA acting lead ombudsman Shail Singh said that overall the number of complaints received by AFCA relating to advice shows a very positive trend for the financial advice industry.
In terms of complaints relating to financial advice specifically, complaints dropped from 1,238 for the 2020-21 financial year, down to 610 for the 2021-22 financial year, Mr Singh told attendees at the SMSF Adviser Technical Strategy Day.
Mr Singh noted that advice complaints accounted for just 0.8 per cent of the 72,000 complaints received in total by AFCA.
There was a total of 3,207 complaints received for the investments and advice category as a whole for the 2021-22 year which also includes managed investment schemes, cryptocurrency exchanges and stock brokers.
However, in the first quarter of the 2022-23 financial year there has seen a significant jump in both complaints for investments and advice overall and complaints specifically relating to financial advice, said Mr Singh.
In the September quarter alone there have been 1,707 complaints relating to financial advice specifically and 2180 disputes relating to investments and advice overall, he noted.
“I don’t think there’s any surprises about what that’s about. We recently saw ASIC write to clients of Dixon Advisory to advise of their rights to come to AFCA under the CSLR,” he stated.
“So a lot of these complaints will be Dixon related complaints which we’ll be dealing with as part of the CSLR.”
Mr Singh stressed that despite the numbers from the previous quarter, the overall trend for financial advice was still positive.
“There’s still some of these more problematic business models flushing through the system,” he said.
ASIC urged former Dixon Advisory clients in August to lodge a complaint with AFCA as soon as possible in order to be eligible for compensation under a potential future Compensation Scheme of Last Resort scheme.
In a letter sent to former clients, ASIC warned that complaints could only be made against firms that were AFCA members.
“If Dixon Advisory’s AFCA membership ceases then no further complaints can be accepted,” ASIC said.
“We encourage former clients of Dixon Advisory to monitor their mailboxes, inboxes, and spam folder for correspondence from ASIC.”
ASIC commenced civil penalty proceedings against Dixon Advisory two years ago for alleged conflicts, best interest failures, and inappropriate advice.
Last month, the Federal Court imposed a $7.2 million penalty on Dixon Advisory and Superannuation Services Limited after concluding that six representatives had failed to act in their clients’ best interests and failed to provide advice appropriate to their clients’ circumstances.
The Court found that on 53 occasions between October 2015 and May 2019, Dixon Advisory was the responsible licensee of six representatives who did not act in the best interests of eight clients when they advised these clients to acquire, roll-over or retain interests in the US Masters Residential Property Fund (URF) and URF-related products.
The six representatives of Dixon Advisory provided personal advice to eight retail clients in their capacity as trustees and members of SMSFs.
Dixon Advisory’s parent company E&P Financial Group Limited announced in January this year that the company had been placed in voluntary administration.
At the time of the announcement, E&P stated that mounting liabilities including legal proceedings and potential claims being determined by AFCA would likely see Dixon become insolvent in the future.
